There are many reasons to travel to the grassland. I want to check antelopes, hunt quail, get used to my new binoculars, and see the effects of drought.

The night before the trip, I was busy packing up my hunting gear, bird identification guide, grassland guide booklet, and prepared some snacks for the road. I prepared a thermos to hold Longjing tea, and I will fill it up in the morning.

As far as I can remember, the trip to the prairie has been a regular part of my year, although it has been somehow delayed, cancelled or forgotten in the past few years because of my fascination with other more important outdoor activities and epidemics-caused The discomfort caused many of us to slow down.

My first trip to the grassland centered on the Pawnee National Grassland. That was more than 40 years ago. In those days, we spent a lot of time around Pawnee Buttes. At that time, it had not been developed, and you could control almost the entire country. We were camping and hiking where we wanted to go and rarely saw another person.

Finally, I discovered the Comanche National Grassland in the south. They are more remote, with canyons, where we found hieroglyphs, petroglyphs and pottery fragments. The plains are rich in antelope flocks, a variety of eagles and songbirds, and scaly quail. We went on a multi-day day trip, established a well-designed camp there, and began to call it the "American Serengeti".

Now I am alone, and my travels are more compact and frugal. If I were camping, I would roll a sleeping bag on the ground or climb into the back of a pickup truck. Now I prefer to eat freeze-dried foods instead of delicate dinners grilled over an open flame.

Last week, I walked east until I saw a large wind farm on the northern ridge. If you turn south, it will be the last one you see a few miles away. At first I hated the way wind farms destroy the grassland skyline, but now I admit that the cost of clean energy is small. Nevertheless, it is still good to watch them disappear in the rearview mirror.

I continued to search for the antelopes south, but did not see them, and remembered that this was the trend of my recent trips. The Arkansas River was woven into a braid, and the place I crossed it was low. I only saw a few ducks.

Once you reach south of the Arkansas River, the Comanche National Prairie will open up into multiple contiguous portions of public land. That's where I got down from the paved road and entered the unimproved dirt road of grassland standards. It will be fine when they are dry, but watch out for rain or wet snow. They can become a greasy, slippery mess. Don't ask how I know.

Of course, due to this year’s drought, the road dries up. I decided to go to the windmill and water tank where I used to hunt antelopes. It overlooks a vast valley full of cholla cacti, but it is just a place to go anyway. I knew that I might end up roaming to other parts of the grassland that I had never been to. That is all there is to it. There is a broad sky, a warm morning, no people, no noise, no wakes. I have everything.

When I came to a closed barbed wire gate across the road, the roaming actually started earlier than I expected. I know it is private property, but in the past I just drove across it to the public land on the other side. There is no lock on the door, but there is a "posting. No hunting" sign. I think this sign may mean that you can’t hunt, but it’s okay to drive there. Instead of taking risks, I turned to the north and headed to the countryside I had never seen before.

This is where the magic begins. This is new, but not. The cholla is dotted with scenery within what you can see, it looks like a place you have been to before, but then you will notice the subtleties. The arroyo is a little distorted with what looks like a coyote or fox den in the bank. Going down this road, there is a Kestrel sitting on the fence line. You are very happy to see it because you haven't seen it in a while. Then there is a three-leaf poplar with a nest with a branch and a stick on it. You think it was holding a red-tailed eagle and a chick last summer. After that, you will come to a windmill that is pumping water into a storage tank. The dirt around the tank shows the footprints of the cattle, but there are also the footprints of the antelopes, so you know that even if you don’t see the antelopes, they are nearby, which is a good thing.

It is now obvious that you will not go hunting quail or hiking, and you will not do most of the things you are prepared to do, and you will not admit to yourself that you have always known this.

Then you tell yourself that this remote grassland is where you want to go now, and when you finish here and make you feel quiet, you will go home.

Visit EdEngleFlyFishing.com to view Ed Engle's blog "The Lone Angler Journal".

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